Committed to Prime? or is InfiniTV 6 ETH an upgrade?

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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T Rush

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Committed to Prime? or is InfiniTV 6 ETH an upgrade?

#1

Post by T Rush » Fri Jun 07, 2013 4:51 pm

over the years, I used many PC TV turner cards...then I got a HDHomeRun Dual network tuner http://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHom ... B0010Y414Q ...loved it, and its still in use today, I use it for standard def basic cable channels for our WiFi devices....but then two turners just weren't enough, and I wanted "HD" channels, so I jumped on a Prime soon after it was released to use with a CableCARD, and I was able to abandon the 'on-board' tuners all together...next thing I knew, more and more of the computers in my house were fighting over those three tuners to provide the full lineup of channels in HD, and all of our old 'TV tubes' got set out on the curb(as well as all the marmot chewed coax cables outside and around our house got pruned back to just 3(just modem and Dual/Prime tuners)...love it even more...so if alittle is good(3 HD turners, and 2 SD tuners), then alot is better, right?


so here is the guy I have now
SiliconDust HDHomeRun PRIME - Three Digital Tuners - CableCARD Ethernet
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815345006
...what if I let the Kids and WiFi devices use that(vs the older Dual), maybe without a CableCARD for just 'basic cable' mostly SD....

...and then I got one of these to put the CableCARD in it:
Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH – Six-Tuner CableCARD Ethernet Network Tuner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815706004

so my questions would be:

1) software/drivers ...are Ceton and SiliconDust pretty comparable? or will I just miss the fairly easy HDHomeRun setup and apps?...or maybe the InfiniTV will do some new better stuff?

2) weekly EAS tests ...really annoying with HDHomeRun's + WMC(stops LiveTV playback and kills buffer)...can the Ceton InfiniTV disable/hide these?

3) iPad/Nexus7 apps ...we got my Wife's iPad kinda working with a HDHomeRun app($$$), not possible with my iPhone and no Nexus7 app....Ceton got anything better there?

4) tuners work pretty good? ... HDHomeRun's tune pretty fast, and I'm pretty happy with their gigabit ethernet performance...but what will happen when I double the number of tuners thru one ethernet cable/port?

5) price worth it? ...I can 'make do' with the 5 tuner set up I have now...but I know with 9 I'll never have any limitations(and I am expanding my recordedTV storage)...basically how hard will it be to convince the Wife its worth $300 for something we already pretty much have :think:


- thank you

jerryt

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#2

Post by jerryt » Fri Jun 07, 2013 5:13 pm

Some additional questions
I was using Ceton InfiniTV USB with SageTV but it produced recordings which Comskip and CCextractor could not process.

So
1) Does Comskip run against the recordings produced by the InfiniTV 6 ETH?

2) Does CCextractor run against the recordings produced by the InfiniTV 6 ETH?

These two software run fine against the recordings produced by my HDHR Prime (But again did not work with my Ceton InfiniTV USB recordings)

Thanks

barnabas1969

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#3

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Jun 07, 2013 5:15 pm

The EAS alerts should not stop your playback, affect your Live TV buffer, nor hurt your recordings. I have two SD HDHR Prime's, and EAS alerts appear... but they are just an overlay. They don't affect the buffer or anything.

Some people have a problem with the EAS alerts never expiring, but that's a problem with Media Center, not the tuner. This happens on all CableCARD tuners with Media Center.

foxwood

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#4

Post by foxwood » Fri Jun 07, 2013 6:39 pm

jerryt wrote:Some additional questions
I was using Ceton InfiniTV USB with SageTV but it produced recordings which Comskip and CCextractor could not process.

So
1) Does Comskip run against the recordings produced by the InfiniTV 6 ETH?

2) Does CCextractor run against the recordings produced by the InfiniTV 6 ETH?

These two software run fine against the recordings produced by my HDHR Prime (But again did not work with my Ceton InfiniTV USB recordings)
The Tuner doesn't produce any recordings - it just makes the cable Company's signal available to whatever recording software you are using. If Comskip/CCextractor didn't like the recordings, it was SageTV that was the problem, not the tuner.

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T Rush

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#5

Post by T Rush » Fri Jun 07, 2013 6:41 pm

barnabas1969 wrote:The EAS alerts should not stop your playback, affect your Live TV buffer, nor hurt your recordings. ...
it does every week for me
...but no, it doesn't show on my recordings....tho what it does is if a recording is taking place, and I'm also watching another live show, it will pop up the "no tuner available" deal and say that they are all in use and which recording I'd like to stop

but yes, now on the first wednesday of every month they test the citywide 'air raid' sirens for storm warnings at 10:00am...so sure enough I knew it was coming, last wednesday(maybe it was thrusday at 4:00am) they also ran the weekly EAS test , and I was watching a TV movie that I'd paused a few times back into the buffer pretty good, then bam, black screen with the EAS banner running and I'd lost all the parts of the movie I'd rewound...I can start(restart live, not where I left off) playback of any channel as long as a tuner is free but I have to close Media Center to dismiss the EAS test(and they always say "tune to channel 22 for info"...but I dont even get channel 22) ...why do they think that only the people watching TV or radio should be warned if there is a storm?...what about all the people eating dinner with their family, reading a book, or asleep in bed; heck what if I'm watching a DVD or listening to music? the Kids dont even watch cable/broadcast TV anymore, they use the Internets for all video...if we are all forced to look out the window and actually pay attention to whats going on around us vs zoning out to mindless TV for our warnings, really how bad would that be?[/rant]
Last edited by T Rush on Fri Jun 07, 2013 7:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

jerryt

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#6

Post by jerryt » Fri Jun 07, 2013 6:50 pm

foxwood wrote:
jerryt wrote:Some additional questions
I was using Ceton InfiniTV USB with SageTV but it produced recordings which Comskip and CCextractor could not process.

So
1) Does Comskip run against the recordings produced by the InfiniTV 6 ETH?

2) Does CCextractor run against the recordings produced by the InfiniTV 6 ETH?

These two software run fine against the recordings produced by my HDHR Prime (But again did not work with my Ceton InfiniTV USB recordings)
The Tuner doesn't produce any recordings - it just makes the cable Company's signal available to whatever recording software you are using. If Comskip/CCextractor didn't like the recordings, it was SageTV that was the problem, not the tuner.

But the same software SageTV is producing Proper recordings from a HDHR Prime.

So how is that the software and not the Ceton InfiniTV USB ???

foxwood

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#7

Post by foxwood » Fri Jun 07, 2013 7:00 pm

The InfiniTV doesn't do anything to the video - it just makes it available to the recording application (WMC or SageTV). It's the recording application that decides what container to save the video in.

Lots of people use Comskip with InfiniTV tuners in WMC - the only thing that causes problems is when the program is Copy Protected, and as far as I know, SageTV can't handle that at all.

jerryt

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#8

Post by jerryt » Fri Jun 07, 2013 7:41 pm

foxwood wrote:The InfiniTV doesn't do anything to the video - it just makes it available to the recording application (WMC or SageTV). It's the recording application that decides what container to save the video in.

Lots of people use Comskip with InfiniTV tuners in WMC - the only thing that causes problems is when the program is Copy Protected, and as far as I know, SageTV can't handle that at all.
It does something different then HDHR Prime I can assure you.

I asked Carlos the author of CCextractor to examine a file recorded by the Ceton InfiniTV USB and his response was;
"The problem in this specific file is that the captions are embedded in a stream defined as 'private MPEG', instead of 'MPEG video".

Again HDHR Prime just works...

But I would like to know if the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH has this same problem, without have to buy one to find out...

I can rephrase the question
1) Does anyone have experience that Comskip and CCextractor softwares can process recordings made by WMC from a Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH

richard1980

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#9

Post by richard1980 » Sat Jun 08, 2013 3:06 am

The specific tuner used has nothing to do with how WMC writes the file. End of story.

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#10

Post by signcarver » Sat Jun 08, 2013 11:03 pm

As you stated, it was the specific file you submitted... unless you recorded both the ceton and the prime at the same time, using the same software/settings (possibly even on the same machine to be sure settings are the same) for "identical" files (not a re-airing later), what you are claiming has no relevance as it only applied to that file.

The only time I had problems with either the prime or ceton tuners (sorry not the 6 ETH but both pci-e and usb versions) with comskip/ccextractor would be with protected content which would both fail as expected (most of my channels are copy once so as a result, I don't use the above programs often) I did just try ccextractor on a recording made from ceton usb and it worked flawlessly ... both just output the stream as sent. I have heard of problems where certain channels occasionally choose the wrong video/caption streams but that is with the stream itself (from source or occasionally provider but usually providers just pass what they get) or with the recording software, not the tuner. For an audio example, KIAH-CW39 (don't know if it still is a problem) would broadcast audio on "Music and effects" instead of "content default" which results in no audio in WMC unless one manually chooses the other stream.

The latest firmware package from ceton (at least on pci-e and usb) allows disabling of EAS which I find quite handy as some of the monthly/weekly tests here are scheduled to terminate 5 hours after they start. I haven't figured out if I want to disable all of EAS... I would prefer a dismiss (or mute) current or some timed feature that way if there is an actual emergency, I can get the message.

As far as portable devices go, I don't think the 6 ETH from ceton will support as many of them since it is not DLNA capable (you could however run your own dlna server)... if this is really important, the new primes due later this year with built in transcoding to h.264 should be a better choice (plus they will be 4 tuners rather than 3) but if WMC is the primary target and you would like to save a little money by not having a 2nd cable card rental and have 6 streams, the ceton would be my choice.

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